WCP6087

[1]¹

Department of Manuscripts

British Museum

London, W.C.1

17 December 1937

Dear Sir²

The Director has passed to me your letter relating to the correspondence and papers of your father, asking me to reply to you.

The collection is clearly of scientific and general importance, and it would certainly be most inadvisable to break it up. For some reasons the autographs of scientists command as a rule very low prices in the sale room, & few of the letters in your list, apart from Darwin’s are likely to realize much if sold separately. Their value from every point of view, is enhanced by their association with the archive.

You may have seen that the friends of the National Libraries³ recently secured for the Imperial College of Science⁴ the Huxley Papers⁵. Those which you are now offering form an excellent pendant to those, and I would suggest your approaching, in the first place, Imperial College. I have[2] not myself at the moment any available funds, and in any case I feel that the Imperial College should be given the opportunity of considering the matter, after its recent acquistion. I am afraid, however, judging from the campaign to raise the necessary sum for the purchase, that you must not expect a very high price. The public seems strangely indifferent to the history of modern science.

Yours faithfully | H Jarvis Bell[?]⁶ (signature)

Keeper of the less[?].

The list is returned herewith.